


paradise lost

by demjinyves



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Gen, Supernatural Elements, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 14:03:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20083417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demjinyves/pseuds/demjinyves
Summary: “Monsters are real [...]. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”― Stephen King





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like a supernatural AU is a true rite of passage into fanfic writing, don't you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps the deadly truth of this, is that monsters live inside all of them. Some just hide it better than others.

He was fourteen years old when he was first taught to kill. Even at an earlier age, he learned that there are things in this world beyond human understanding. There are creatures far superior in strength, in beauty, in everything that made them so fragile. So human.

But these things were not big, scary things that hid in the shadows. Or waited for him in the woods he was told to never go into.

Monsters are real.

The world is silent as his feet dig into the dewy earth. Around this time of year, between the end of summer and the start of fall, he can still taste the moisture in the air. The sun is just about to set and daylight was slowly weening. He crouches beneath the wild grass, behind the thickets of trees.

They wouldn’t turn here, not in plain sight. But his father always warned me to stay alert. Look alive.

_Stay alive._

Yugyeom braces himself against the rough tree bark, trying to stop my hands from shaking. He knows his knuckles are white under his gloves and tried not to think of the minutes passing by. Breaths shallow, but not unheard. Not on their ears.

_Stay alive._

Being in the field is nothing like training. Maybe it was just a good start, to learn to listen for their footsteps, for their strides that seemed to change the very direction of the wind. To think that he was doing something noble.

Stepping into the danger, coming home with some skulls hanging from his belt. Blades smeared with blood and needing sharpening.

As a child, he was fed stories about all the creatures that hid from the light. The things of nightmares. Rows of white teeth pulled behind black lips. Long claws so sharp, they could shred flesh into ribbons. Cold eyes that left men paralyzed in fear with just one look.

But nothing could have ever prepared Yugyeom for the real thing. Never in a million years.

He drew his knife as he watched the creature struggle in the trap. Blood, the ichor from his leg, and the low whimpers of pain plagued the very air between them both. The silver clamp gleamed under the setting sun, just as Yugyeom neared.

It was massive. The size of a man and, he could only imagine, impossibly larger stood to full height. Jaw snapping wildly open and close around the clamp, whimpering and snarling, desperate and angry. As it shrank into an unruly ball of white fur and canine teeth, the thick muscles rippled and tensed. Where fingers and toes once were, claws sank into the dirt, crumpling it in those long-fingered hands.

All he can think is, _It’s here. It’s real._

His head was spinning with the need to run away. Everything in him told him to run away, let it stay stuck there before it realizes he’d been the one to trap it.

_Stay alive._

Yugyeom gripped the hilt of the knife as it grew heavy in his hand, the weight of his entire body resting between these trembling fingers. The fear, in turn, grips him, taking hold of his throat, seizing control of his legs, his arms, the breath he’s holding.

_Stay alive._

And take a step.

In an instant, the wolf leaps for him.

_Shit. Shit shit shit._

Werewolves are real.

Yugyeom falls back just as those defiant roars are halted by pained whines. It falls at his feet, pulled down by the toothed clamp biting down on the leg. The more the wolf struggled, the tighter the clamp could pull. If it had any sense, any _human_ sense that didn’t cloud animal instinct, it’d stop moving.

His eyes fall to the bloody ankle clutched between the clamps, knowing if he let the werewolf try again to leap, it’d lose that foot. But would that be enough to stop it?

It would make Yugyeom a coward to just let it bleed out and die.

Unwillingly, his mouth fell open and Yugyeom takes in greedy, heavy gasps for air he didn’t know he needed. The young hunter watched as it tried to nurse the wound, tried to get the mouth close enough to even nuzzle at it with its nose let alone pry it open with its teeth.

He wants to get up, but the last time Yugyeom tried to move, he stared right into its mouth.

In his heart, he knows that this is where it ends. End the hopeless attempts at freedom and save himself the trouble of waiting for it to die. To bring home a prize he didn’t have the nerve to kill with his own two hands.

But the hunter knows some part of him pitied this mindless creature. And still, another part also knows that it is human too. Yugyeom just didn’t know which part he felt some semblance of sympathy for.

It takes him seconds, maybe minutes before he finds the feeling in his arm to grab the pistol from its holster. His fingers fumble for the safety, clumsy and weak and so obviously afraid, but the wolf doesn’t even look at him.

Maybe the stories were true. Maybe they can smell fear. And it smelled his and knew that only one of them was walking out of these woods alive.

_I don’t want to die here._

He aims for the head. Not deadly enough to kill it. Not for good, anyway, but he can’t bring himself to remember what he learned.

The boy covered his mouth with his other hand, clenching his teeth together. He has to. He knows he has to get away. He has to kill this thing.

_Stop shaking. Stop fucking shaking._

Why can’t he kill this thing? It’s killed before, it has to have. It lives to kill, just like all the others. Hunt and kill, eat and kill, it’s all they know to do. They’re not human, even if they could hide in their human skin and disguise their howling and snarling with human voices.

_They’re not human._

The wolf is panting, Yugyeom hears it, as the head rose slowly.

“Don’t,” it seems to plead with glowing eyes. Molten, practically gold. Gleaming, like the sun.

A clawed hand raises towards him. He pulls the safety back with a sharp click, raising the pistol to aim at its neck.

A loud breath escapes its slacked jaw, from exhaustion or pain—Yugyeom can’t seem to tell anymore.

All he can do is watch as it crumples to the earth, holding his breath. His finger is on the trigger, squeezing on it, tight and hot, sticky with his own sweat. It is so heavy.

A shrill whine breaks the thick silence, thick as the moist air as the stench of his blood had filled it before it becomes a low groan.

It is a he. The wolf is a man.

The boy’s eyes widen as all he has it in him to do is stare at the creature at his feet. The man it was becoming.

The wide expanse of his chest began to slowly shrink and become compact. The hard lines of his limbs seemed to pull into themselves, muscles tightening as long fur grew not out, but in, revealing skin.

His human skin.

And then his bones—god, the bones.

The hollow, sharp cracks echo, so loud and yet they were the only ones who were here to listen. To the deep, guttural groans as it melded with each snap and click of every bone pushing and moving against the skin. Moving back into its original place. And his hands – the ones that reached for the boy – pressed to his heart and stomach.

Even as he lets out one last cry, something between animal and man, Yugyeom couldn’t bring himself to lower the gun. He couldn’t give a werewolf that chance.

_Stay alive._

His muzzle retracts into a jaw as his face becomes human, eyes shut tight as that once enormous mouth seems to close. Only for his lips to close around a row of massive teeth, white, sharp, and so absolutely feral. Until they shrink too, the very points dulling until they recognizably belong to a person.

He probably would have gnawed his own leg free if he could reach it.

Yugyeom doesn’t dare move.

Nothing in his years of training could have prepared him for this.

The boy watches as his own arms shake, trying to hold up the weight of his human body as the man before him continued to bleed out. The clamp bit down around tighter his ankle. Biting as he had been turning, sinking deeper.

By now, it must have cut into a nerve. His tendon was torn. And the iron will keep him from healing as long as it was embedded in his flesh.

“Let me go.”

Yugyeom looks at his face through the pistol pointed between the wolf's eyes, raising the weapon as he raises his head.

It was human now. The boy could unsheathe his knife and sink it into its heart, the one that beat the same as mine, pumped blood and gave life to the body that was the same as his.

And yet, there was something dark about the way this man looked. That unworldly, not of my world or yours kind of look to him. Something not meant for human understanding. What drew people to fear those like him. How they lured others like lambs to slaughter.

“Let me go and I’ll let you go,” he says hoarsely. “You can’t kill me.”

Yugyeom swallows. They both know he can. It’s a matter of will. And if he can swallow back his fear.

“Don’t kill me. I’ll let you go. And, with all I’ve got right now, I’ll save you from him.”

_Him?_

But before Yugyeom could ask—

_Stay alive._

Without even thinking—

_I don’t want to die here._

How could he have let this happen?

Cold. The hand that held his shoulder was so cold. It was the chill that ran up his spine. The ghost of a cruel whisper.

“Let the pup go.”

A voice so warm, he almost wanted to hide in it. To hide from the ice of those fingers that seemed to reach beneath Yugyeom's skin to take hold of his own cowardly heart. How can both belong to the same being?

The stories were real.

Unlike the werewolf dying at his feet, nothing about the man that stood before him, with that icy hand on his shoulder, was human. Maybe in appearance, but what hid underneath was a creature that could rival the werewolf’s ferocity. Not nearly as bestial.

But there was something just as dark. Much older, but as other-worldly. Just as savage.

With an innocent tilt of his head, the stranger asked the werewolf, “You’re a purebred. The prodigal son. Jackson, is it?”

Yugyeom stares at the white skin on thin fingers as they held him, gentle and lofty. Careless.

He has trained his whole life to be a hunter. But from the moment he stepped foot into these woods, the minute Yugyeom intruded in their territory, he became their prey. How arrogant of a human to think he could trap a predator in its own home.

“Fuck off, you corpse,” the werewolf snarled.

“I never expect much from your species, but some gratitude won’t kill you.”

An annoyed sigh escaped from above me and without thinking, the boy looked up. And the man looked back at him with eyes that were too old for the untouched smoothness of his features and the lean, languid fluidity of an effortless grace. Yugyeom saw it then, that indescribable pull these creatures had on weak-minded, soft-bodied humans. What it was about them that drew his kind into the palm of their hands.

This man was not like Jackson Wang. None of his kind was. They only knew and would continue to learn and practice refined cruelty.

Vampires are real.

“Though, I suppose you’d rather lose that leg before thanking me. Or Kim Yugyeom, for not having the courage to paint these woods with your brains. The vampire spoke his name with a serenity that shook him to his core.

Vampires are real, werewolves too.

Yugyeom’s voice trembled and the man surely felt it under his hand. “Who—who are you?”

The werewolf answered with a bone-chilling growl, “His name is Im Jaebum.”

“I’m going to give you the choice I never had.”

Whether the vampire was talking to the werewolf or both of them, the boy couldn’t tell. Yugyeom would have done anything then to have survived. But thinking back, he would have chosen wrong, anyway.

He stared into the eyes of the monsters in his father’s stories. And chose to find the humanity hidden inside of them.

He’s come to find, since then, there are more terrible things in this world. More evils than the vampires that hid in plain sight and the werewolves that hunted in the night. Jaebum and Jackson were the least of them.

Perhaps the deadly truth of this, is that monsters live inside all of them. Some just hide it better than others. Especially him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/wangdeux) if you want, it's free!


	2. Chapter 1: Emperor's New Clothes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey so don't read this if blood, accidental murder, and dubious mortals trigger you.

The room is thick with the smell of clean linens and a vanilla candle burning at the nightstand. The only light in her room. There are stuffed animals hidden in the closet, in a box with the rest of her old things. Photographs, little things of her parents’ home, the memories she made there.

Memories?

Yes, humans cling to their memories. Their all too short, fleeting little lives. How many years is enough to live? Forty? Eighty? So many are fortunate to be alive for just a few more.

He smeared the back of his hand over his mouth. Wet. Would dry to rust. Something between a sob and gasp choked in his throat. He put his hands on the floor, flinching when he touched it and he clenches his fingers into fists as more blood – _how can there be so much more?_ – runs down his wrists and arms.

_Move_, his body told him, _Get out of here._

He leans his head back against the edge of the bed, his shoulder brushing against her long hair as her neck hangs over the edge.

He turns to her and she looks back at him as women in paintings do. Her eyes open, rosy lips curved in a silent cry, of pleasure, horror, in all her unknowing mortality. Pretty. Still pretty.

But dead.

He stared at her as she stared up at the ceiling. He swallows thickly and pulls his phone out.

He had kissed those lips. Once when they left the club, and again as she undressed for him.

She’d been so shy. Eyes downcast when she told him she’d just moved into her own place. Biting her lip as he walked her to her door.

_“You coming in or what?”_

Her eyes were burning fire into his, all breathless laughter as he kissed her shoulders, nipped at her bottom lip and her neck. Her neck.

_“You’re so cold.”_

Pulsing with life. Underneath his fingers, the racing beat of her heart, faster and faster as he traced the length of her neck with his tongue.

She mewled underneath him with her fingers in his hair and his name rolling off her lips in hoarse whispers. He locked his arms around her waist and she rocked against him, locked her legs around his back.

The room was filled with the sounds of her sighing, _“Yes, yes,”_ and his head was heavy with the thought of how she would taste. He listened to the steady rhythm of her pulse.

His teeth scraped along that delicate skin, so smooth and untouched, unmarred. With his other hand, he pulled down the strap of her bra and laved at her collarbone, licking the hollow where it met her shoulder. He panted against her as she urged him to kiss her there again, to leave his mark on her and have it to remember him by come morning.

_“Right there.”_

His arm locked around her waist as the other held the side of her neck, squeezing until she couldn’t move against him. And he sank his pin-prick teeth into the crook of her shoulder and she cried out, just once. Then tensed, her entire body seizing and still, and he winced when her nails dug into his scalp and meant to pull at his hair.

She never did. They were never strong enough.

She fell limp in his arms, but he didn’t notice. He crushed her body flush into his as he opened his mouth and drank. And he drank and drank and drank.

Blood, he was to find, was far sweeter than any kiss. He only knew life when it first ran down his mouth in a great, red gush. It poured past his lips and dribbled down his chin and onto her sheets. And when he had drunk his fill, he laid her down. He pushed his hair from his eyes and in the dim candlelight, the stench of her filled the room, filled his nostrils and the taste of coppery rust coated his tongue and down his throat. The world was spinning. He was so full.

He was so full, he laughed.

_“Do not feed until you are full. Only when you’ve had enough.”_

What the hell does that mean? _Enough._

His tongue, stained red, darted out to lick the corner of his mouth, finding that same red sweetness was drying sticky and clinging to his skin if he didn’t lick it away.

_There was never enough._

He pushed the comforter away, the flowered patterns stained blotchy and thick even in the dark, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

_Shit._

His eyes fell to the still-warm body at his feet, tracing up the curve of her thighs. Thin, glossy red lines fell down her stomach and stained at the waistband of her lace panties. Her chest rose and fell slowly, but he knew eventually, her breaths would quicken and become shallow. Until they became gasps for air, for life. Begging for more breaths to be enough. Until her chest grew tight and she ceased to move altogether because there would never again be enough. Red fingerprints dotted along her chest, her shoulder and neck.

He held his hands up. She was all over them.

And he laughed again as her final breaths filled the air, but he couldn’t hear anything but himself. He gets up, with some effort now that his belly is full and his head heavy, and leans down to look at her.

_Take a good, long look at her._

Her eyes are doe-like, innocent. No, ignorant. Terribly ignorant, not knowing that the monsters she was afraid of as a child was the one she brought into her bed. The real monsters don’t look big and horrifying.

In fact, the real monsters are beautiful. And what is beauty? Beauty is terror.

_Whatever we call beautiful, we tremble before it._

He notices her breaths have become hurried, shrill gasps as he smiles down at her, in his lazy, hazy stupor. He presses a wet hand to her cheek and she lets out a broken sob.

“Wh-what—“ She chokes on her cries, her lip quivering. “What—“

“You’re dying.” He leaves a wet trail from the apple of her cheek to the wound in the crook of her shoulder. “Don’t be scared, it happens to all of us.”

There was no telling when she was crying or trying to hold onto every breath. Because, after all, anyone of them could be her last. He holds her as she trembles and writhes in his arms, disgusted and afraid and unwilling to die. Like she had a choice.

He held her still, his fingers tracing over the two pin-prick wounds as they continued dripping blood on her sheets, onto the carpet, until she stopped shaking so.

Until the drum of her heart ceased altogether. Only then did he sink to the floor where she’d bled out and leaned in to lick the wound of her open vein, her neck dangling over the edge of the bed. He grimaced. It always stopped tasting good once it ran cold.

_How much is enough?_

“You’ve reached Eden, this is Jinyoung.”

“J-Jinyoung?” he asked hoarsely. “It’s me. I…”

“What’s wrong?” Though he doesn’t sound too concerned.

His head falls back on the edge of the bed as he listens to the faint music in the background. He looks at the dead girl next to him. He swallows, fingers shaking. His knuckles, crusted over with blood, stain his cheeks as he looks straight ahead and finds a wall of photographs staring back at him. Her memories.

“I need your help. Is… is JB there? I-I need help. I need JB. I need you. I need your help. I need your help,” he whimpers.

There’s no response on the other line, only music as they come into focus. Those fuzzy images now clear even in the dark. He recognizes her parents. Her graduation photos with faces he doesn’t know, with coworkers at the hospital she told him about.

“Listen to me,” Jinyoung’s voice cuts coldly through the phone, “Stay calm. I need you to tell me where you are. Then, clean yourself up and get out of there. Do you understand?”

“Okay,” he nods with no one to see. Except for the dead girl. “Okay, got it.”

“BamBam.”

He swallows thickly. “Yes?”

“Jaebum will know about this.”

🌙

_Eden._ Welcome to paradise.

There was always a line outside the black building, just one bouncer – always the same one – and there was no flirting or fighting your way. Save your vice for when you’re let in.

The obsidian-tiled dance floor was always full and if it wasn’t, then the patrons were drinking. Their feet dug into the lit-up tiles, shoes tracing the swirling, glowing patterns as everyone swayed to the pulsing music and closed their eyes though dimmed darkness made the experience all the more thrilling.

They came in throngs. Drinking, dancing, _consuming_. Women came and went, never allowed to be touched, only to be seen. Dressed too well to work here, yet not patrons. Never catering to them nor being catered to. But they disappeared all too soon to be followed and served no real purpose. Not to the club.

At the head of the bar, in white light read, _NOX NOCTIS_.

“Seize the night.”

Eden seemed to come out of nowhere. In the heart of the city, it was the pinnacle of nightlife. A place where people could go to be indulgent and it thrived as they became drawn to the allure of a temporary escape. There was something about it, an unspoken promise of danger and decadence that pulled them all in.

There was a private room that no one ever goes in. Why would it matter when there were so many? But it was there and it went unnoticed or ignored as all clientele has asked for access to the Red Room only to be turned away. Some have tried to sneak in but to no avail. It was bolted shut.

Because the Red Room was not a room at all, but a staircase.

Underneath Eden, in all its darkness and lit-up floors, was the only place a vampire could go to feed in this city anymore. At least, if they wanted to do it in peace. Not in pieces.

It was a quiet place of black carpet and matching velvet walls, curtains pulled over plush leather booths. Even a bar in the middle of the room, for those younger vampires still adjusting to their new lives. But they would all feed from the source eventually and take to reserving a booth or wait for one. Or a room for those who liked their privacy.

The twenty-first century had rendered their kind to be a little more reserved, taught them to appear humble despite humility not being in their nature.

Eden was a vampire’s safe haven. The only one left in the city. So, they come here to feed and laugh at the humans upstairs who saw only flowers, but not the serpents that hid underneath.

This was Jaebum’s cruelty. This was his apathy towards humanity. Cater to their simple, mortal pleasures if it will fill his own pockets. They were, as they have always been and will be to his kind, a means to an end.

“I always thought Eden was just a cry for independence. But then, I should have known Im Jaebum was far too ambitious for temper tantrums.”

“Jinyoung, you don’t know the meaning of independence,” he drawls wryly, never looking up from the books stacked on his desk. “If you’re done loitering in my office, you have a newborn to look after.”

From across the room, Jinyoung sniffs. “He’s not _my_ newborn. And he has a name, you incorrigible fuck.”

“And until BamBam learns to feed like a civilized fledgling, he isn’t mine either,” Jaebum snaps, his eyes glaring holes into his books.

“Oh, because you were _so_ good at feeding when you were his age.”

“I was, actually. I was a fast learner. And so were you,” he pointed out with contempt. “BamBam has it easy, they all do. It’s this century. The fledglings are spoiled.”

Jinyoung wrinkles his nose as he gets up and goes to open the scotch behind Jaebum’s desk. “He’ll learn. So he’s killed someone. Again. I don’t know any of us who haven’t. Whose fault is it that he’s having such a hard time?”

“I’ll shove this pen through your eye.”

“Oh, will you?” The younger vampire pouts and holds his drink in front of him like a shield. “I’m shaking in my patent leather shoes.”

“You’re just like him, I swear.”

“Like BamBam? He does have impeccable taste—“

“Shut up,” Jaebum scowls. “Don’t make me say it.”

“And why the hell shouldn’t you? If you’re going to kill anyone, at least have the nerve to say the name. Have the honor—“

“What honor is there among us?”

In a blink, he’s slammed his hands on the elder vampire’s books, smashing the glass and spilling scotch on the pages. Ink started running and pooling on parchment.

“Enough among _ourselves_,” Jinyoung hisses, pieces of his scotch glass clicking together in his palm. “I have known you for the better quarter of this millennium. You pretend in front of that council all you like if it’s to your advantage. But not to me. Not to BamBam either.”

He shakes the broken shards from his hand, watching it clatter against the polished surface before straightening his tie and sitting down in front of Jaebum’s desk, crossing one leg over the other and folding his hands on top of his knee.

“This coven, however small we are,” Jinyoung starts earnestly, albeit grimly, “We are all we have. _Therapon_. We are brothers in arms, Jaebum, sworn by oath and blood.”

“Blood of my blood.” The words taste almost foreign on Jaebum’s tongue, but such is life. Such were the many lives he’s lived with Jinyoung, wandering wherever their sire so pleased, wherever Jinyoung had not been.

He knows as well as the man sitting before him that there was a reason for always returning to Seoul. More than it being their home, long before they’ve tried making a home of any place else, Jaebum didn’t simply crave a life here.

He wanted everything; beyond Eden, beyond the haven he provided for the vampires dwelling in this city, beyond all he’s built here. He was only getting started. He would take this city and claim this coven. No one, not even his maker, could have kept him.

Now, no one was left to.

His eyes ran from the ink bleeding into the slowly drying scotch, then up to Jinyoung’s impassive gaze.

“The son always lives to surpass the father,” the younger vampire says dryly.

Jaebum rolls his eyes. “If I’d known that disciplining BamBam would bring out all these euphemisms.”

“Discipline I can understand. What I don’t understand,” he hisses between clenched teeth, “Is why you’d enlist the help of werewolves and – this is what I really can’t grasp – a _hunter_.”

“He’s just a kid, he’s not even a good one.” Jaebum pauses then meets Jinyoung’s eyes. “He’s the same age BamBam was when he was sired.”

The reminder was answered with a disappointed sneer. “Must you insult his potential at every turn? Teaching a fledgling how to live is hard enough; if he heard you making comparisons—”

“Then maybe he could use some of that potential to learn,” Jaebum insisted. “He lacks self-control.”

“He lacks a sire. You and I both know what he’s capable of, we have _seen_ what he can do—”

But Jinyoung was interrupted by Jaebum’s fist slamming hard down on the desk. His strength, though controlled, was felt through the barest tremors of these four walls, the threatening vibrations under their shoes.

_Temper, temper_, they heard crooning in a voice that didn’t belong to either of them.

“We’ve watched him feed when he was hungry and what happened when he’d had his fill? He kept feeding.” Jinyoung watched the lines of Jaebum’s face tense and harden, jaw fighting back a snarl. “Until he was delirious with euphoria, half-conscious and still latched onto a drained corpse.”

The younger vampire tilted his head with an unimpressed, blatantly patronizing smile. “What came after that first taste of blood? We’ve watched him compel humans, you know he has a gift. Especially for his age, how many of our own have you seen try and fail before they sulk and wait to be spoon-fed?” Jinyoung didn’t wait for an answer. “He’s young, Jaebum. He’ll learn.”

“He’ll have to.” For a moment, it seemed as though contempt made itself known in Jaebum’s eyes, but no. Jinyoung recognized that look and it was not a grudge being held. It was slips of impatience. “We have to move forward.”

“Again, I understand. But I fail to see the point in adopting a cowardly little boy and a litter of puppies.”

Jaebum folds his hands in front of him, resisting the urge to smack the patronizing look off Jinyoung’s face. “How many of our kind have fallen to theirs? And theirs to ours? For what, glory?”

“Sport too, I’m sure,” he shrugged. Vampires aren’t known for being peaceful creatures. Never were.

Between the two of them, they’ve witnessed a fair amount of cruelty towards werewolves. Enough to turn away from it and acknowledge that theirs was not a savagery without purpose, not like the rest of their kind. Some of the oldest living vampires don’t even remember when it was that their two species couldn’t live without one needing to butcher the other.

“Don’t we want to lay such a useless fight to rest?”

“The old ones will not accept them, Jaebum. You know that.”

“And they don’t have to. None of us have to accept them,” he retorts slowly, deliberately. “No one besides us even needs to know. But we deserve peace.”

Jinyoung snorted, leaning back against his chair. He stared at him, his brother in arms and of oaths, in disbelief as he ran his tongue over his front teeth. He wanted to laugh.

“You don’t want peace, Im Jaebum.” He shakes his head, smirking sardonically. “You want control. Power. You want a throne.”

Jaebum raises an eyebrow. _“What of it?”_ he seems to ask without speaking a word.

_Yes, there he is¸_ Jinyoung thinks as Jaebum’s eyes bore into his, _That is the man who surpassed our maker. The fledgling who decapitated our master’s legacy._

“I want everything.”

_And he will forge his own dynasty, with his principles and his honor. His patience. And ambition. All of that ambition._

Jinyoung cradles his face in his palm. Reaching forward with the other arm, he flicks through the drenched pages of Jaebum’s books. Eden’s finances were in good hands.

“You serve greed well,” he murmurs with amusement. “I hope it’ll repay you just as well, for all you’ve done in its name.”

“Greed bends to me, Jinyoung. You know me better than that.”

He pursed his lips. _What happens when it stops?_ “Of course.”

“If you’re worried—”

“I don’t have so little faith that I trouble myself with idle thoughts.” His chin tilted upwards to meet Jaebum’s cool gaze, smiling back with the same cold brevity. “I’m skeptical, justifiably, and I don’t agree with your methods. But you’ve brought us here.”

For as long as he’d known Jaebum, from the moment he became a fledgling, Jinyoung was keenly aware of his ambition. This indomitable force, this _hunger_ that took them anywhere and everywhere he’d wanted to go. And he kept going. He was still going.

“You’ve taken us too far to go back.”

Jaebum smiled then, finally returning the younger vampire’s biting sentiments. “And we’re too invested for all this complaining.” He pushed back in his chair to stand, smoothing his shirt and slacks as Jinyoung stood with him. “Where is he?”

“In his room,” Jinyoung answered dryly, “Where you told me to put him when you _grounded_ him. Sulking, I’m sure. You never did have the makings of a sire.”

“And you do? That’s almost laughable.”

“I’ll be impressed if you remembered how to laugh after all these years,” but he was already walking past Jinyoung across the room. “Don’t be too cruel to him.”

Jaebum stopped at the doorway, the pulsating music rushing in with the opened door of his office. He turned his head over his shoulder, staring at Jinyoung from his peripheral vision. “Why not? So he can grow up as spoiled as you? Look at that, Jinyoung. I do remember how to laugh.”

There was no sound nor movement, not any indication that told him Jaebum found anything to laugh at. Ever stoic, proud and also cold—calculating, but never vindictive. Not when it came to this coven. Not to each other.

“You would do well to remember who it was that taught me to be cruel.”

The door closed with a soft click and silence followed, seizing any snide remark Jinyoung would have had. He could feel it in his bones, harrowing, something akin to haunting. Jaebum had a way of making you feel his silence. It tugged at your edges.

Even after all this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you, Donna Tartt, for your "beauty is terror" quote even though it's the sublime that is terror, but I digress.
> 
> yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/wangdeux) if you want, it's free!

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/feraljackson) or [tumblr](https://yves-saintlaurwang.tumblr.com/) if you want, it's free!


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